A Journey Towards Smart Sustainable Cities – It is Possible

Having attended the 2024 Smart Cities Summit in Taiwan and making presentations on Just Transitions in Taiwan and on Building Sustainable Cities in Kaohsiung, the whole encounter was a mind opening experience. it was a serious learning curve which tells me that it is possible to have sustainable and smart cities not just in the future but today. Seeing the levels of crime at a low, adherence to traffic signals by both pedestrians and drivers, respect for each other and seamless informed transport solutions. Seeing intentional greenery and reduced greenhouse and carbon emissions made one realise the world we desire with improved quality of life for all is possible.

The goal towards sustainable, smart and net zero emission cities by 2050 is too far in my view, by then we would have done much harm to the environment and ourselves by default. Therefore, I believe that we need to work towards achieving these goals by 2035 and look towards improving on them for 2050. We do not have much time on our side. Looking at the Taiwanese model, one can only stand to say it is possible for us as Africa to transition and make a significant input towards a sustainable and eco friendly world. There are three areas that we need to

The first thing is to have leadership that is people and service based. Currently many of our leaders are about fulfilling, sustaining and empowering themselves at the expense of efficiency and effectiveness, some going as far as wanting to take over all economies and means of production. This is problematic because it does not help in growing and sustaining our economies and it fosters more corruption, grovelling and injustice.  Service and people centred leadership will evolve to all other sectors such that everyone doing something will not need to be motivated by someone else, the need to achieve and to succeed will be a motivator on its own. Thus we will achieve efficiency and effectiveness with what we have and continue to seek improvement over time.

The second area is a change of mindset. We need to move away from the mindset of the world owes us something, or the government has to do something for us. We need to all start asking what we can do for the benefit of greater humanity and consciencely seek to even change our mindsets from depending upon others but looking at how we can be self sustaining economies and countries. This means even the individual needs to find ways of self sustenance, back yard gardens, small holdings entrepreneurship, multi skilling etc. We need to have a solution driven mindset and take every challenge as an opportunity to find solutions and find improvement. Every problem has a beneficial solution, we just need to be intentional to find it and use it. The world we live in today has a lot of disruption from the conventional ,and we need to identify positive disruption, harness such and use it for our betterment.

The last area I believe needs to be addressed is that we need to be cognisant of the fact that the little bit we do in our corner counts a great deal towards the greater big for all humanity. Most of my presentations centred on this that despite being small and of little influence, yet we still seek to do what we can to improve and become self sustainable and eco friendly. At the end of the day it is everyone in their so called little corner doing something that results in a beneficial result. No effort is ever too small or insignificant. It is the small wrong things we do in our corners that have ruined the world, therefore the same small corner with us doing right will have great effect in the whole world.

I take this opportunity to thank the cities of Mbabane, Taiwan and Kaohsiung for having faith in us and giving us this opportunity to gain insight and wisdom and we look forward to seeing the fruits of this great  collaboration to the benefit of the people of the same cities. #SCSE2024 #Taipei #Kaohsiung #SustainableCities #NetZeroEmissions #CityTwinning #SmartCities